


one last breath (at the end of the world)

by marvelleous



Series: i'll follow you, to the ends of the earth [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Phil definitely cries, lots of fluff, maybe post 4x21, set post 4x20, very angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 19:50:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10815570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marvelleous/pseuds/marvelleous
Summary: Her lips are cold, like the water they had been rescued from, and he tries to breathe air into her lungs. His hands press rhythmically against her chest in an attempt to bring her back to consciousness.His vision is blurred, tears welling in his eyes, spilling over and running down his cheeks and onto hers."Please don't die. Please. I can't lose you again, not when I've just gotten you back."





	one last breath (at the end of the world)

After all that Melinda had been through in just the past few weeks - infected by a ghost, going insane, dying, being brought back to life only to be kidnapped by an evil robot and have her consciousness trapped within a virtual reality, Phil doesn’t expect that she’ll stop fighting now.

Not here.

Not while forcing their way out of a metal prison in the middle of the ocean.

He knows that she is too weak, sees it, feels it from the moment she wakes up and falls into his arms. He could have prevented this, noticed she was gone earlier, rescued her sooner. They have no way of knowing how long they’ve been gone from this world, the real world, and however long that is, Melinda had been taken weeks earlier.

She’s always been so strong, and he can do nothing but support her as her steps falter beside him, listen as her breathing grows more haggard and watch as the colour seeps from her skin. They’re soaked, shaking, and even in this light he can see that her lips are turning purple.

By the time they make it to the surface, Melinda is unconscious in his arms, and he finds himself unable to breathe as the other agents pull them from the water. He brushes them off when they try to take her from him, gently setting her body down onto the cold metal floor of the Zephyr. He is only dimly aware of them draping a heated blanket around his shoulders, handing him a second and then retreating.

Carefully, he lifts her with one arm, spreading the blanket on the floor with the other before laying her back down and covering her up, hoping that the thin material will bring some warmth back to her icy skin. He brushes back the damp hair matted to her forehead, leans down and presses a kiss to her temple.

“May, come on May, wake up,” he whispers, brushing his thumb over her cheek, but she doesn’t stir. Her chest is no longer rising and falling with uneven breaths and he fears the worst as he holds his finger beneath her nose and feels nothing.

It takes everything in him to stop from immediately panicking as he tries to figure out what to do. He calls out for the other agents, but he knows that they’re probably in the cockpit and he’s the only one who can take immediate action.

Her lips are cold, like the water they had been rescued from, and he tries to breathe air into her lungs. His hands press rhythmically against her chest in an attempt to bring her back to consciousness.

His vision is blurred, tears welling in his eyes, spilling over and running down his cheeks and onto hers.

"Please don't die. Please. I can't lose you again, not when I've just gotten you back."

He prays that she can hear him, that she'll follow his voice back to his side.

When she still doesn't respond, he can only pull her closer into his arms and let the tears run free. He had let her down.

"I...I don't even know what is real anymore. You were gone and then I found you and I-" he breaks off into another round of loud sobs, just cradling her unmoving body in his arms.

He rests his forehead against hers, cupping her cheek with his hand, the force of his sobs causing his entire body to shake. Their noses brush as he leans down and presses one more gentle kiss against her lips, before closing his eyes and holding her tightly.

"I never thought that when I got to kiss the real you, it would be like this," he whispers. It’s a confession for no one else to hear.

Phil feels like his world is ending.

He doesn't notice as Melinda cracks one eye open, and then the other, frowning at him with a brow raised.

"What the hell do you mean by kiss the _real_ me?"

The shock on his face at the realisation that his best friend, the woman who meant more than everything else in the world to him, is alive and not dead, is enough to make Melinda laugh.

He processes the facts in three stages. One, palpable relief that she's alive. Two, what in the world had he just confessed to her and three, why is Melinda laughing like that.

"Have you been faking it this whole time?" he asks her, aghast at the prospect.

She smiles and he's just so relieved that she isn't dead, he doesn't even care that she's almost taken a decade off his life.

"My question first. What did you mean by kissing the real me?"

Even slumped in his arms, Melinda is terrifying and he pulls her against him, having this urgent need to just hold her as close as he can, before he responds.

"I may have made out with a robot version of you."

He doesn't know what she's going to make of his confession and, as the seconds pass in silence, he grows more and more anxious. When Melinda finally pulls back from where her face is pressed against his neck, she's smiling and he'll take that as a good sign.

"I wanted to hear what you might say to me if you had no other choice."

He shakes his head, letting out another sob, this one mingled with laughter as he brushes her hair back again. He cups her jaw with his free hand while the other tightens around her waist.

"Don't do that again," he says, sniffing, and her smile is fonder now as she hooks an arm around his neck, pulling herself a little higher, a little closer.

"As long as you promise not to go around kissing robotic versions of me," she responds, fingers running through his hair.

He tilts his head to the side as if to consider her statement and she makes a face at him before leaning in and pressing their lips together once more.

They're both freezing, drenched from head to toe in ocean water, but with each moment they kiss, they can feel the warmth and the heat building between them.

She tugs his lower lip between her teeth and he groans in response, winding his hand tighter in her damp curls.

When she pulls away, he follows, planting another softer, shorter kiss against her lips.

"I can work with that."

“Ahem.”

They both turn at the sound of someone clearing their throat, and see a grinning Daisy, standing beside Simmons, who has her arms full of medical equipment, looking more than a little uncomfortable by however much of their display she had managed to witness.

“We need to get you two into bed. Beds. Separate beds. Medical beds. Oh, I’m just going to stop talking now.”

Phil can only smile as Melinda smirks at Simmons stammering. He gently eases her off his lap, and stands, looping his arms beneath hers in an effort to pull her to her feet.

“You okay?”

He can feel the two younger agents watching them, and is stunned when Melinda’s soft nod turns into a subtle shake of the head. He bends, lifting her into his arms while she winds her own around his shoulders, burying her face against his neck and Phil can only grin at the matching expressions on Daisy and Jemma’s faces.

The two scurry off in the direction of the medbay when he gives them a pointed look, and he follows slowly behind, smiling at the little puffs of air Melinda is releasing against his collarbone.

“You really scared me back there,” he confesses, speaking softly enough so that they cannot be overheard. She tilts her head up so she can see his face, craning her neck to press a kiss to the underside of his jaw, and he shivers slightly at her touch.

“I wasn’t sure you were ever going to do something about this,” she responds, and it goes unspoken between them what _this_ is. The years of friendships and almosts and boundaries and being there for one another unconditionally.

“To be fair I did. You just happened to be a robot at the time.”

She scoffs lightly, but the nails digging into the base of his skull warned him that she might not be so forgiving if he makes the same mistake again in the future.

“Let me guess, you cracked open the Haig with her as well.”

He pauses, adjusting her weight in his arms and turning his head to study her face. The Haig… he isn’t sure what to make of her statement. They’d discussed it for years, a promise, a possibility. It hadn’t been brought up again until the Eli Morrow incident, and she’d already been taken hostage by Radcliffe.

There’s so many questions he wants to ask her right now, but in his distraction, he doesn’t realise they’ve arrived at their destination, Daisy and Simmons already bustling around and setting things up.

Phil sets Melinda down onto the bed, running a hand down the side of her face and tucking her still wet hair behind her ear. He presses another gentle kiss to the crown of her head, taking her cold hands into his own, trying to bring her as much warmth as possible.

“Ahem, sir. We have a spare clothes for you over here. You can get changed while Daisy and I help Agent May.”

True to Jemma’s words, Daisy has a stack of neatly folded clothing in her arms, and as uncomfortable as wearing wet clothing is, he is reluctant to leave Melinda’s side for even a moment.

“Come on Coulson.”

Daisy shoves the items in his direction, giving him no choice but to let go of Melinda’s hands to catch them before they fall. But he still makes no move to exit the room and find somewhere else to change.

“Sir, a little privacy?” Jemma suggests, and Phil looks Melinda in the eye, feeling flushed when she smirks.

“It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before,” he hears Melinda tell them, and he laughs at the look of disgust on Daisy’s face before making his way out of the room. The faster he’s done, the sooner he can get back.

After being apart for so long, he can’t bear the thought of being away from her longer than absolutely necessary.

 

* * *

 

When Phil returns, Jemma is nowhere to be seen, and Daisy is sitting in a chair beside Melinda, speaking softly to her. He sees that they have somehow managed to wedge another bed beside Melinda’s, and he gives Daisy a questioning look at that.

“We didn’t think we’d be able to convince you two to stay in your own beds, and May isn’t in a state to be up and walking around, so this was the best compromise.”

Daisy stands, awkwardly patting Melinda on the shoulder and giving him a smile before leaving them alone together.

He stands at the foot of both beds, just watching as Melinda watches him back. Her lips slowly turn up into a smile, and she stretches an arm out, motioning to the empty space beside her, and he takes it as a sign that she wants to be as close to him as he does to her. She proves him right by snuggling into his side the moment he settles on the bed beside her, mindful of the small gap in the adjoining mattresses.

“I still don’t know when they took you,” he admits, slipping an arm around her shoulder. Now that they’re safe, he can see, feel, how thin she really is, how she far she had deteriorated in the time she had been captured, how real the possibility of losing her had been.

“It was after you came back, through the portal. I went to Radcliffe’s to pick AIDA up. I don’t remember anything after that. You were the first thing I saw back here in the real world.”

He nods, burying his nose against her hair and just inhaling the scent of her, the comfort that it brings him, just having her so close.

“I thought you’d been gone since you died,” he says finally, exhaling slowly as she moves a hand to rest over his heart. He covers it with his own and brushes his thumb over her knuckles.

Melinda doesn’t respond, just rubs her face lightly against his shoulder, presumably trying to find a comfortable position to sleep in.

“So, you made me jump in the trash.”

She nods.

“And you saw me when you died.”

The hand resting on his chest twitches, her fingers digging into the material of his shirt as she whispers a soft ‘yes’.

Phil isn’t sure whether she’s awake when he brushes another kiss to the side of her face before leaning back into his pillow, closing his eyes and trying to relax.

“You mean a lot to me,” he tells her, before he drifts off. He misses the way she smiles at the words, but he swears he hears her mumble something back to him.

“You mean everything to me.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to jess for the beta :) if you liked the story, feel free to drop a comment below!


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